Emptying the notebook heading into GMCT final

Posted By
Mike New
On
October 29, 2008 @ 8:24 pm
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County Tournaments,Girls Soccer |
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GIRLS SOCCER

Check tomorrow’s paper for short features on the East Brunswick goalie tandem of Kerri Williams and Bishop Ahr midfielder Katie Metrokotsas. Meanwhile, here’s even more finals thoughts to whet your whistle:

Since Bishop Ahr’s surge has been driven by the foot of junior Alyssa Welsh, it seems logical to start there. The forward has 32 goals, easily the most in the conference. She’s a big reason the team has only lost once since Sept. 18, and almost certainly has to score if the Trojans want to add one more upset to their resume.
Just ask head coach Jim Tavormina.
“Alyssa is going to be huge,” said the first-year head coach. “Not too many teams have scored a bunch of goals off East Brunswick, and we need her and KerriAnn [Cahillane] to go up and give us a couple to keep us in the game. East Brunswick’s had some close ones, but they don’t give up very many. I’ll be looking to Alyssa.”
That, of course, segues into …

The shifty Welsh will be target No. 1 for the Bears back line, and for good reason. She had a league-leading 32 goals on the season, and found the dagger that sunk South Brunswick in the semifinal. As juniors, Kent and Haskoor represent the veterans of the East Brunswick defense, and with sophomores Becky Acevedo and Rachel Gala, they will try and corrall Welsh.
“She is very dangerous with the ball at her feet,” Brady said. “That’s something we try to train a lot, keeping the defender on her back, and she does it well. She turns very quickly and aggressively, and she’s looking to carve you up in one or two moves.”
With Kent and Acevedo up the middle, and Haskoor and Gala wide, the Bears’ goal is to avoid situations such as the one South Brunswick ran into, when Welsh slipped past the back line and put home the only goal of a 1-0 semifinal win.
“She was able to get into space,” Brady said. “We need to keep her from getting there. You don’t score 30 goals in the GMC without being a great finisher, no matter who you play. She has a head for putting the ball into the net. Our main goal is to limit her looks, and hopefully through gaining and maintaining possession.”
And if that succeeds ….

If East Brunswick is able to win the possession battle, the next step, Brady said, is to be dynamic off the ball.
“One of the things that has opened us up is Katie Chace making hard runs off the ball,” he said. “You can hear her shriek for the ball, and sometimes she draws two defenders. Because of the presence she has, she can bring players with her. When she’s making dynamic runs and running across the back line, it makes it very hard for a defense. We’ve played against some zone, and she finds those seams. In man-to-man, she can pull across the field.”
The challenge will be not letting up, and finishing runs even when the first five didn’t result in goals. Because 79 minutes of good soccer might not be enough against the Trojans …

On one hand, it would have been nice to see the Trojans roll past South Brunswick, validating the 5-0 Sayreville win and really putting East Brusnwick on notice.
But in retrospect, perhaps that 1-0 struggle was the game Bishop Ahr had to go through before they face East Brunswick.
“We didn’t play our best game,” Tavormina said. “But we scored the one goal, and then we held on. We did what we had to do. Good teams come out on top when they don’t play their best. We did that Monday.”
Still, they aren’t the only ones who have experience doing that …

This is not your typical big-sister Bears squad, simply bullying around the other teams in the county. Despite a nifty 16-1-2 record, they haven’t been blowing people out, and definitely had trouble scoring goals in the middle of the season. But in the same way that the Trojans should be better for the test of the semifinals, Brady thinks his team has earned its stripes.
“We’ve played a lot of 0-0 and 1-0 soccer, so that helped test us to keep our focus on playing a full 80 minutes of soccer,” he said. “Sometimes, when you have possession for a large period of the game, you become susceptible to that momentary lapse. So one of the things is, we’ve really been able to keep that mental edge throughout the full 80 minutes. And that’s something we’ve developed. I still think we’re playing hungry, even when we’re up. That becomes very important late in the season, because at any minute, that moment could come that wins or loses a game.”
In other words, they saw what happened to South Brunswick. They don’t want that to happen to them.

So when all is said is done, how do these two coaches view Thursday’s final?

TAVORMINA: “I’m looking forward to a really good, tough match. I think it’s going to be fun for both teams. I think we’re going to surprise some people and play a good game.”

BRADY: “They’ll treat Bishop Ahr exactly like Old Bridge in last year’s final. They know this is a team that wants what they want. Soccer’s a sport where, more than any other, anybody can win or lose.”